


hold the wheel and drive

by canticle



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Female Kurusu Akira, Light Angst, Pegoryu Week 2019, Pining, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Sloppy Makeouts, Unresolved Emotional Tension, a lot of implications really, implied Ryuji/Ann, implied akira/ann, implied messy past relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-05 04:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canticle/pseuds/canticle
Summary: A road trip isn't a road trip without your best friend by your side, right?(Akira and Ryuji ditch town and figure out some things about themselves and each other in the process)





	1. (it's not rocket science)

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! happy pegoryu week!!
> 
> this is basically an homage to retro's pr week series last year, a love letter to the hitchhiker au fly talked about once, and owes a big ol' thank you to rabid, who's still on thin fucking ice but kept feeding me really good spicy ryuji/fem!akira shit back when my brain was broke (it still is, i'm holding it together with duct tape and terror, i just _really_ wanted to do pr week) no guarantees i'll be able to finish it all within the week but for fucks sake i'm going to try my damndest
> 
> (ps: consider this kinda a post-canon rage daughter au-ish sorta thing)

The sun bakes down onto his unprotected neck, onto his shoulders and the hard asphalt digging into Akira’s shins. The car, his pride and joy, his brand new (used) golden ticket to freedom, lists forward sadly onto its deflated front tire. They’re on a stretch of highway that they haven’t seen another car on since they started driving it hours ago.

This isn’t how this was supposed to go.

Akira’s voice creeps into the silence between the two of them and the road about as unobtrusively as anything Akira does (not at all.) “Flat.” 

“Uh-huh.” He can see that, more resigned and disappointed than upset. “Shit. Hell. Hold on, Ma gave me a card with some numbers to call if somethin’ like this happened.” Before he can do more than take a step forward, though, Akira’s outflung arm smacks him in the kneecap and halts him in his place. “Huh?”

“Y’got a spare?” Her accent’s gotten thicker in the year that she’s been back in Inaba; he can’t remember her drawl being that heavy. He likes it, though; it drips off her tongue and melts into the air.

He’s missed her.

Not so much how her hand smacks into him again, jolting him back to attention. “‘yuj, do you have a spare tire?” she repeats, looking up at him now from under the brim of her baseball cap. Her eyes are still the same stormy grey, hair the same wild black mess. There’s nothing physically different.

There’s almost certainly something _ off. _

“Uh,” he says, so eloquently, “if I did, where would it be?” 

The way she snorts and ducks her head is so familiar it makes him ache, even as she loses the battle between stoic and smiling. “Check the trunk. We’ll go from there.”

The car is a graduation gift, unexpected but well-received, from his ma and the lump sum of child support money she’s had stashed in a bank accruing interest for a decade. It’s a snub-nosed ‘04 hatchback Yaris, kinda dirty beige in color, nearly 250k km on the motor, but it’s all paid off and it’s _ his. _She gives him the title when he comes home from celebrating, still flush with happiness even as the knowledge that Akira’s already back on a train to Inaba threatens to drag his mood down.

Two months of driver’s ed classes later, he’s fully legal and on the road out of the city with nothing on his mind but _ her. _

He’s not stupid, even if he is an idiot. He knows what he feels, or at least _ that _ he feels, _ has _felt, maybe since the first time he saw her rip her mask off and dissolve into flames. Does it matter what he feels? No, not at all. Before everything else, she’s his best friend, and he’s hers. There’s no way he’d spoil that with something he can’t even put words to.

But he’s missed her like wildfire, missed her tucked warm and solid against his side, missed her stupid fake glasses and the way she’d shove them up her nose when she’s making a point, the way she’d inhale noodles at the beef bowl shop after a hard workout, the way she’d smile at him on the roof, in the halls, on the streets, in the attic. He’s missed her like he’d miss any precious thing that’s been gone from his life too long, like a sore tooth, like a bone-deep ache.

And he knows something’s off with her.

She knows the attic over Leblanc is always open to her, knows Boss will always have space in his house for her, but she’d refused to stay more than the day when she’d come up to celebrate his and Ann’s graduation. It passed like a whirlwind; he barely got to see her, barely got to do more than squeeze her so hard she squeaked and mutter “y’should’ve been up there with us.” 

“Yeah,” she’d breathed, holding him back just as tight, and neither of them had said anything else about it.

She was too thin. Her hair too long, a bit too shaggy; her eyes, tired. Her shoulders, slumped. No matter how good she is at faking it, Ryuji _ knows _her.

So he drives, almost mindlessly, the windows down and the radio up and the rising sun to his left. He’s got a whole summer with nothing better to do, and everything that’s best in front of him.

  


There’s bits and pieces of car junk spread all over the road, and Akira’s smudged in grime all the way up to her elbows. “Pass me that,” she grunts, pointing vaguely at a cluster of three metal bits. One of them is the hubcap, he _ thinks. _ “The thing.” 

“What thing?” 

Instead of answering, she flexes her fingers in a way that he’s sure means oodles to her and nothing at goddamn all to him. “The _ thing.” _

“Aki,” he says, gritting his teeth together as he sinks down to his haunches next to her, “y’aint pointing at anything.” Getting down this low lets him better see the particulars of how the car is lofted high enough into the air that the flat tire no longer touches the ground. It’s kinda scary, to be honest; he doesn’t like how close Akira is, doesn’t like thinking about what could happen if it fell.

But Akira moves with practiced confidence— or she did, at least, before she started demanding incomprehensible things of him.

“Don’t say _ y’aint, _ ” she mutters in soul-deep disgust, a reaction that never fails to delight him. She turns and finally gestures to the x-shaped doohickey. “The, the, the, fuckin’, _ wrench. _ The _ wrench. _Give me the wrench.” 

“All you had to do was ask.” He hefts it, passes it to her, and sits back as she gets to work.

  
  


Inaba’s close to three hours down the coast. He’s been to Akira’s place just once before, but remembered enough of the address to plug it into his map app and have it spit out something that sounded about right. He hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t put anything into the group chat, and only really stopped to consider what he was doing as he pulled into her driveway and turned the car off.

It’s a Tuesday. There’s no other cars in the driveway, at least, nothing but a little scooter tucked up against the garage. 

He hesitates, but it’s all worth it when Akira opens the door in a t-shirt he _ swears _used to live in his drawers and a pinched, drawn expression that flares out into shock. 

“Hey,” he blurts. “Ma got me a car for graduation. Wanna come on a road trip with me?”

Akira blinks, hesitant in a way that’s both understandable and distressing, because now that he’s down here he doesn’t want to go home, not without her. Doesn’t want to go _ anywhere _without her. “You,” she starts, rubbing a hand across her face. Her feet are bare. She still barely comes up to his chin. “I…”

He swallows.

She laughs, once, hoarse and dry and somehow devoid of humor. “Yes,” she says, and then more firmly, “yes. Yeah. Okay. Give me five minutes.” 

In less than ten, they’re on the road. Ryuji doesn’t know where; Akira points, and he follows.

  
  


And that leads them here, on the side of a road in the beating sun as Akira wraps her hands around the tire, and grunts, and pulls— and the whole thing comes off. “Shit,” Ryuji says, impressed. “Where’d you learn how to change a tire? I shoulda probably learned how to do this before I left Tokyo, huh? All those hours and that driver’s ed course didn’t tell me half the things I should know.”

She grunts, fixated on maneuvering the spare tire back onto the metal pegs, but after several moments of long, patient silence, says “Morgana taught me.” 

Ryuji blinks. “He’s a—” 

“Car, sometimes.” She goes quiet again, rolling the flat tire across the ground and squinting at it like it’ll give up all its secrets if she glares. It’s a very effective technique on him and Ann, at least. “Back when we still had Mementos.” 

“Mona could get flat tires?” He never had when they dungeon-dove, as far as Ryuji remembers. Akira’s silent for a noticeably longer period of time, long enough that he reaches over and knocks the flat tire to the ground. She huffs, crinkling her nose at him. Somehow she’s got grease all over her face in little fingerprints and smudges. It’s kinda cute. 

But that’s not something he needs to think about, especially when she’s finally _ talking _to him. “Couple times. We, uh.” She slants a glance up at him, defiant in a way he doesn’t understand until she opens her mouth again. “Used to go in alone sometimes. Just the top couple floors, just when I needed a break. He’d let me run into things and we’d just...it was good for farming some extra material. Good stress relief, too.” Her lips twist wryly, fingers spinning one of the metal bits with the hole in it around and around and around.

They haven’t spoken about Mementos in ages, haven’t spoken about the Metaverse in longer than he realizes. It’s prickly, in a way; there’s something in the way she says it that means her hackles are raised, like she’s preparing for a fight.

Ryuji doesn’t want to fight with her. He tilts his head. “Alone?

“To the top couple floors,” she repeats, propping the tire back up. She folds both arms and leans on it, as if this brewing argument is nothing but a casual conversation, as if this isn’t the first thing they’ve talked about since he showed up on her doorstep with no notice, as if nothing about this situation is strange at all. “When we— the two of us, him and I, and all the rest of you too I guess, were strong enough that they’d turn tail and run.” 

“And you didn’t call any of us to come in with you?”

She ducks her head, avoiding his eyes. “Didn’t wanna bother,” she mutters. A shitty excuse, and she knows it, and he knows it. “Just needed some stress relief. We didn’t do it a lot, Morgana would bitch at me and then ‘throw a flat’ and make me change it. Done a few since I came back, too. It’s not a big deal.”

There’s a lot of things that could be pertaining to. Going into Mementos alone. Learning how to change a tire. Being back in Inaba, alone. There’s a thunderstorm brewing behind her eyes and lightning threatening to crackle between her teeth, and he doesn’t _ understand, _but he wants to. 

He wants to.

He rocks backwards, hand rubbing the back of his neck, scruffing across the freshly-buzzed hair there. “Can you teach me?”

That brings her to a pause, banks her fire to coals, turns her lips down at the corners. The rigid line of her shoulders goes malleable again; Ryuji exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I s’pose,” she agrees, and gestures with the wrench. “C’mere. Let me show you. It’s not rocket science.”

She guides him through putting the spare tire back onto the lug nuts, through tightening each one until his biceps strain with the effort, through popping the hubcap back into place and checking the tire’s pressure until she’s satisfied with its safety. “There’s a service center about 20km up the road,” she says, going to wipe her bangs out of her forehead and pausing to wrinkle her nose when she sees the grease and grime coating it. “Shit. Do you have any paper towels?”

He’s got a couple of napkins in the glove box; they don’t do much else than push the dirt around, even after he sacrifices his water bottle to tidying her up. Now that she’s not fiddling around mechanically she’s fussing, shifting from foot to food, holding her hands out from her body like she’s concerned about soiling herself. 

Too late for that. 

While she scrubs at her hand and bitches, he licks his thumb and starts rubbing at the dirty spots she’s left on her forehead.“

She goes still as a statue, silent as the grave, breathless and motionless. He ignores it, entirely focused on wiping away the long smudge that goes nearly all the way across her forehead.

If she really didn’t want him touching her, he wouldn’t be able to touch her. He remembers her first few weeks at Shujin, prickly and hissing and more than ready to stab anyone that came at her the wrong way. This weird sort of unfriendliness isn’t even a fraction of what that was. There’s something wrong, but if she hasn’t mentioned it now she’s not going to mention it at all, and he might not be the best at figuring things out but he _ knows _Kurusu Akira down to her bones, the same way she knows him.

It’s gone now, but he (selfishly) lingers a little longer, rubbing the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. She’s barely breathing, like a statue of a girl, lashes twitching against her cheeks. “Bet the service center’ll have a bathroom, yeah?” he says without moving.

“Yeah,” she agrees, also without moving. Her voice is...light. Breathy. Like she’s winded.

He tilts his head and keeps his eyes on her face. His thumb moves over her cheek again, deliberate and slow.

Her eyes open wide, and she pulls away in one fast, fluid motion. “C’mon, get in,” she mutters, already on her way around to the passenger side. “Sooner you get in, sooner we can get going again.” 

Huh. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ryuji says, something inside his chest perking up in avaricious interest. “Coming.”


	2. (charge)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> charged phones and conversations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check out those dynamic tags and rating change baybeeee
> 
> sorry if ryuann and pegoann isn't your thing i promise this is a pegoryu based fic but my filthy filthy hands and my filthy filthy heart just love bonersquad so much

There’s something magical about all-night diners.

The one they’re shacked up in right now caters to long-haul truckers. It’s vast, with attached showers and a convenience store and even a diner, two line cooks cracking eggs onto the supersized griddle and making desultory conversation. Akira had a shower; her hair lays in damp locks across her cheeks and face and the back of her neck, dripping trails of moisture down her shirt collar. They’re both nursing mugs of coffee, strong enough to make the hair on the back of Ryuji’s neck stand up, sludgy enough to stick a spoon in.

He hasn’t had more than a sip of his drink, still not a fan of it. Akira’s drained two mugs and is tipping the rest of the coffee pot into her empty cup for round three.

Their phones sit stacked in the corner of the booth, one on top of the other as they jockey for space at the outlet. Two chargers for two ports is just about as perfect as math can get, without factoring in the awkward bulky angles of Ryuji’s wall charger meeting the sleek curves of Akira’s. They fit, but poorly, and Ryuji thinks if he looks away the whole mess might catch fire.

They didn’t  _ need  _ to drive through the night. They didn’t need to be driving at all; they could’ve pulled off the highway at any rest station within the last 150 km and napped in the back until daylight. Ryuji’s favorite thing about the Yaris is the hatchback; he has both back seats laid down flat, and his and Akira’s sleeping bags just barely fit if they don’t mind squeezing in close.

He’s never minded. Akira hasn’t said anything to indicate that she does. They sleep back-to-back, and he swears he’s never slept as soundly as he does when he falls asleep to the sound of her breathing, to the rise and fall of her lungs. 

But the road is so quiet at night. There’s no one else but them for endless starry stretches, the sky unfolding in sheets above as the road unspools in ribbons below. He doesn’t really know where they are; once the phones charge back up enough that he can check his maps, he’s sure Akira will tell him.

Akira, who’s currently wilting like a cut flower, both elbows on the table and her head in her hands. She looks tired, like she hasn’t been sleeping well on the road. Like there’s an invisible weight pressing her down, threatening to flatten her, a weight she doesn’t want him to know about.

Dumbass. She might like to pretend to be all stoic, but Ryuji knows her. He breaks open the end of a new straw wrapper and aims it at her, waits, waits…

She sighs, and twists her head just so, and he shoots the wrapper off the end, beaning her square in the middle of her forehead. “Wuh,” she barks, jerking upright immediately. “What—” 

The battle to keep the laughter locked behind his teeth is pitifully short. He snickers, louder when she wakes up enough to sneer and crumple the paper wrapper into a ball, flicking it into his face with unerring accuracy.

It lands in his open mouth. He thinks about spitting it out, but chews and swallows it instead, just to see the glazed look on her face morph into disgusted horror. “Nasty,” she says, voice blurry with sleep. “If y’re that hungry, go get some of those diner eggs.”

There’s a gross wet  _ crack-splat  _ and a burst of startled laughter from the direction of the griddle. “Nah,” he says, “think this is safer.”

And finally she grins his favorite grin, half her mouth twisting up and up and a bright flash of teeth and the crinkles deepening at the edge of her eyes. It’s only made better when she yawns in the middle of it, catlike, making no effort to cover her mouth. “Think they gave me decaf.”

“Think you don’t need any more. Need a nap?” 

“Nah.” She shakes her head and scrubs her hands through her hair, somehow leaving it in even more disarray. “I wanna see the sun rise on the road.” 

“Sure,” Ryuji agrees easily. He’s tired, but not tired enough that driving for another few hours will be an issue. “You want anything to eat with your coffee? Maybe an IV? Want me to see if we can get a keg for the road?”

And oh, if he thought he missed her smile, her laugh is even better, tossing her head back and braying ugly and honest. “Yeah,” she says, “yeah, actually, go ask, see what the biggest thermos they have is—” 

“Tell ‘em to grind all their beans and just dump them in the hot water tank, yeah? We can stick you back in the shower, you can drink it straight outta the showerhead—” 

She’s giggling harder now, almost hiccupping with laughter, palms slapping the table in that sort of late-night hysteria that makes everything a thousand times funnier. “Ryuji, that’s  _ disgusting,  _ do you know how often they clean out those pipes?? That’s a waste of good coffee beans and I won’t have it—” 

“I can get you a to-go bag,” he suggests, just to stretch it out, just to keep her laughing, the happiest he’s seen her in so, so long. “Like a, what is it, grain sack?” That sets her off even harder, loud enough that he sees the line cooks turn to look at them out of the corner of his eye. Good.  _ Let  _ them look. He’ll make a huge show of it if it means that Akira keeps laughing.

As she winds down back into warm, tired silence, his phone buzzes. He picks it up, careful not to disturb Akira’s, and opens it up.

**>>new message from: nyann** ****   
_ hellooooo earth to Ryuji it’s been like a week!! are you dead?? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ how’d i text you back if i was dead dummy _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ omg Ryuji you know that’s not the point!! your mom said you left Tokyo three days ago. why didn’t you tell me?? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone ** ****   
_ it was kinda a split second decision _ __   
_ sorry _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ ugh, whatever, don’t apologize. where are you right now? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ dunno  _ _   
_ __ somewhere south of inaba? southwest?

**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ !! did you stop by and see Akira?! _ __   
__   


“Hey, Aki.”

She lifts her head up with a muzzy-sounding query, wrinkling her nose a split second before he snaps a picture. “Gross. No paparazzi.”

“Ann’s botherin’ me,” he says in explanation— and doesn’t miss the way she goes stiff and rigid, her eyes sliding away from him like butter skating across a hot pan. “Want me to say hi for you?” 

“Mmm,” she grunts, splaying both hands on the table and pushing herself up. “Back in a moment. Need the bathroom.” 

“Uh, alright…” She doesn’t wait for him to finish before she staggers off, stumbling her first few steps before catching her footing. He watches her go, brow furrowed, until she turns a corner and vanishes from his line of sight, then hits a few buttons and sends the picture.

  
  
**>>from: nyann ** ****   
_ Ryuji you son of a bitch!! I thought you were sitting in your room reading manga like a loser this whole week but you’ve been on a road trip with Akira?! and neither of you told me??? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ hey don’t be rude to my ma like that _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ oh, yeah, you’re right. Ryuji, you son of a bastard, I thought you were sitting in your room reading manga like a loser, etc etc etc _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ can you knock it off with the loser shit _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ uh, no? stop being a loser first _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ you stop being a loser first _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ ohhhhhhh good comeback _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ if i wanted a comeback _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ don’t finish that. _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ i woulda just _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ RYUJI _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ jizzed on your stomach and gotten it that way _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ you are DISGUSTING _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ yeah well you still fucked me so what’s that make you _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ done with your bullshit, thank god _ __   
_ she looks tired _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ yeah we’re both p beat _ __   
_ been a long couple days on the road _ __   
_ id put her on but she just went to the bathroom _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann ** ****   
_ sooooooooooo _ __   
_ three days alone with Akira _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ Yeah _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ where’ve you been sleeping? there’s no way the two of you can afford a hotel every night. are you camping? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ nah  _ __   
_ ive got my back seats laid down _ _   
_ __ my legs get a little crunched but aki fits just fine

**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ sleeping with her already? >:3  _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ NO _ __   
_ jesus ann a) theres room but not  _ ** _that _ ** _ much room and b) no! _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ hee _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ besides were not like that _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** **   
** __ liar

**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ you know we’re not _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ could be if you weren’t a loser _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ besides isnt she just into girls _ __   
_ what with you two n all _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ dating a girl doesnt mean you have to be a lesbian _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ oh  _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ i mean, come on, i dated the two of you _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ oh yeah right _ __   
_ huh  _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ huh what? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ nothin  _ __   
_ hey hows shiho _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ perfect as ever <3 _ __   
  


He only looks up from Ann’s torrential infodump about her girlfriend when Akira swings back into her seat across the booth from him. The smile from earlier is gone from her face; not a single trace remains, not even at the corners of her eyes. He’d think she was just tired, if it wasn’t for the timing and for the conversation still lit up on his screen. “Welcome back,” he offers. She just grunts at him, still tense, still wound up tight. “Ann says hi.” 

She doesn’t answer. He pushes a little further. “Says you haven’t been talking to her. You two get in a catfight or somethin’?” He’d hoped the pun would loosen her up somewhat, but no; if anything she draws tighter inward, the corners of her mouth turning down.   
  
“No,” she says, short, taut. “She’s been busy. So have I.” 

There’s something in that first phrase, something laced through the words that has Ryuji slouching, chewing on it internally. It’s not something he thinks he’s ever heard from Akira before, not that he’s an expert on nuance in her voice. “Sure sounds like a fight,” he says.

“It’s not.” She half-turns away from him, ending the line of questioning decisively as she reaches for her phone. “Son of a— seriously?” 

“What?” He stands up, leans a bit across the table as she turns her phone towards him. The ‘low power’ icon still flashes prominently on the screen. “Shit.” 

“Yeah,” she breathes, frustrated. “My charger wasn’t pushed in enough.” 

“Here, you can use my outlet. Mine’s good for a bit.” Ryuji reaches out and takes her hand, then her phone. The second he touches her she  _ jolts,  _ like he’s shocked her, like he’s struck her, and he almost yanks his hand away. “You alright?” 

She’s the one to pull away, leaving her phone in his palm and phantom heat from her touch fading almost immediately. “I’m,” she starts, a low raw note in her voice. “Going to go over to the convenience section. I think they had portable chargers over there.”

“Akira—” 

But she’s already turned her back on him, already gone.

He huffs out a frustrated sigh and turns back to his phone.

**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ idk what her problem is _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ and then Shiho was like _ __   
_ wait, Shiho or Akira? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ aki  _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ you wouldn’t, lmao _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ whats that supposed to mean _ __   
_ i figured out your problems just fine _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ LMAO  _ __   
_ if by problems you mean my clit and even that took you a week _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ HEY _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ am I wrong??? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ youre not helping _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ you need a lot more help than I can give you from Tokyo, Ryuji _ __   
_ have you tried talking to her? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ she isnt talking much _ __   
_ kinda like _ __   
_ yknow  _ __   
_ when all that shit went down _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ oh _ __   
_ oh, Aki… _ __   
_ is she there? put her on _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ she went off all mad or upset _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ what did you do?? _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ told her you said hi _ __   
_ she got all grumpy _ _   
_ __ then she got all grumpy again and went to go find a portable charger

**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ yeah, that...sounds like Aki… _ __   
_ she hasn’t been answering me for a while either _ __   
_ i wonder… _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ i can smell the smoke from here _ __   
_ don’t think too hard _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ just for that i’m going to let you figure it out yourself, you jerk! _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ aw hey dont be like that _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ nope nope nope you figure out your own problems Sakamoto _ __   
_ now if you’ll excuse me, my beautiful perfect girlfriend is calling for me and i have to answer _ __   
__   
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****   
_ whipped _ __   
__   
**>>from: nyann** ****   
_ and loving it! _ __   
  


_   
_ Ryuji mutters a curse and turns the screen off before he can see the inevitable bevy of emojis Shiho will send the second Ann lets her get a hold of her phone, just in time to watch Akira round the corner again. She’s got a charger in her hands and something bleak in her face, something that she wipes clear off the second she sees Ryuji looking at her. 

She doesn’t say anything, just lifts the charger and gives it a little wiggle before dropping it on the table, gathering up her wall charger and dropping it in her backpack. She tilts her head to the door, clearly ready to go.

He wants to argue for a little more time spent in this shitty booth and shitty diner coffee and shitty conversation, but instead he sighs and shoves his still-mostly-full mug of coffee in her direction. “Finish this off for me?” 

After a moment of hesitation, she does, drains it down in one long, unbroken series of swallows. “Now can we go?” she asks sardonically, wiping her sleeve across her mouth.   
  
He supposes so. There’s nothing much here for them anymore.


	3. (leap of faith)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> faith to take the fall, and faith to hold on tight

The ocean is a vast sparkling expanse to their right, flitting in and out of view behind the trees. The radio plays softly beneath their conversation, grown less stilted, more flexible, over the last few hours.

“I’m just saying—” 

“Well, you’re wrong.” Akira’s voice is so flat beneath Ryuji’s laughter, which only lends more hilarity to the situation. “Scullsy could take any of the Featherman Rangers in a fair fight. Hell, she could probably take two or three, with her keen senses of observation and her, uh, gun?” 

“Just cause she’s got a gun doesn’t mean she can beat up _ two of ‘em at once, _Aki—” 

“Do _ you _wanna fight Scullsy, Ryuji?” she demands, turning to face him completely in her seat. “Would you try and take that woman on? She’d beat your ass into the grass and you’d thank her for it—” 

“Just cause she’s hot??” 

“Because that lady is a god on this earth!!” she shouts, and Ryuji has to pull over to the side of the road, all but bawling with laughter. “She’s order against entropy in a very nice suit—” 

“Issat all it takes for you?” he goads. “Hot lady in a good suit?” 

“A _ great _suit, thank you,” Akira says primly, crossing her arms across her chest. Her cheeks are red, either from the sun or the force of her emotions. “Women in suits are nothing to frown at.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji agrees, a brief flash of Panther crossing his memory. Akira’s too, from the looks of it; she loses the gleeful edge of banter in her eyes and folds, the mood cooling a few degrees. “Hey, uh,” he starts, fumbling for the words, trying to keep her from slipping too far back into the quiet sullen shell she’s trending towards, “is everything alright?” 

Her silence is both piqued and pointed. “What do you mean?” 

He’s never been one to mince words. “You’re actin’ weird. Have been this whole trip.”

More silence. He risks a glance, but she’s not looking at him anymore. He thinks about offering to turn around, to bring her back to Inaba and drop her off at her doorstep, leaving her there and driving back to Tokyo with nothing but the radio to keep him company. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

Even more so when she sighs.

It’s a tiny thing, and that’s how he knows it’s genuine; not overblown, not dramaticized, just...straight from the depths of her lungs, of her heart. It makes him want to reach over and bundle her up in his arms, squeeze whatever bad feelings are writhing around inside her until she pops like a pimple and expels them all. It wouldn’t matter if he got them all over himself, as long as she was clean and empty and _ better _.

“Y’wanna talk about it?” 

He’s not sure why he says it, not sure it was the right thing to do at all, especially when Akira’s eyes go hooded, staring at the dashboard instead. “About what?” she asks, like she can hide her feelings from him.

“About whatever’s making you sigh like that.”

“I’m not—” She cuts herself off with a frustrated growl and shoves herself further down into her seat. “I don’t.” 

Ryuji just looks at her, slumped in her seat sullen and unhappy. “You sure?” he checks. “Cause whatever it is...you’re not happy.” 

Akira lifts her lip in a snarl that has no heat behind it. It’s meant as a deflection, and not a very emphatic one. “Am I ever?”

“You were,” he says quietly, “just a moment ago.” He turns off the radio; after a moment, in the silence, he turns the car off and pops the e-brake, taking off his seatbelt and twisting to look at her. “Aki. You’re my best friend, you know?”

Somehow, even _ that _is the wrong thing to say. Her expression flickers, shutters; she turns her head away. “Yeah,” she says, blank as empty paper. “I know.” 

He doesn’t understand. She knows this, and he knows this; it’s an immutable law of the universe that his place is always going to be next to her. “Then why—” 

“Because!” she snaps, a reaction more than an explanation.

Ryuji knows he’s not the best at interpersonal stuff. He’s a do-er, not a thinker or a speaker. He’s too rough, too brash, too loud, too callous. But this is _ important. _ This is _ Akira. _“Because…?”

The word hangs uneasily in the air between them, a baited fish hook in a still pool. He hears her swallow, hears her take one breath, two, three, four, fi—

“I,” she says, like it’s being dragged out of her by force, like she’s hovering over a sheer drop terrified to make the jump, “I…”

“You?”

“Don’t,” she snaps immediately, real anger in her voice. “You’re the one who wanted me to talk, don’t fuckin’ _ banter _at me while I’m trying!”

He falls silent. So does she, and he thinks he may have wrecked it all, but then she starts talking again. “You and Ann.” 

“What about us?” 

“How long?” 

“How...long? How long what?” 

“Have you been—” she gestures wordless, frustrated, knuckles going white where her fingers twist into her shirt. “Dating.”

He frowns. “We’re not? We messed around for a while, but it wasn’t anythin’ really much. Why?” 

She doesn’t answer, not for a minute or two that feels like a year and a half. “There was a stretch of time,” she says, quiet and even, “where every time I’d try to text one or both of you, you’d never answer.”

Ryuji remembers it vividly; a couple weeks into fooling around, they hit their sweet spot. It was mostly stress relief and loneliness for the both of them; with Makoto and Haru off to college and Akira no longer a gravity well to spin around, they’d all drifted apart somewhat. Ann was keeping up with her workouts, surprisingly, and decided to join him for a couple of his own, and then she invited him back to her place to try and study, and then to catch up on the latest shounen anime, and then to try and stave off the gut-wrenching loneliness, and then, well…

Stress relief. 

He remembers slapping for his phone a couple times just as the “missed call” notification popped up on the screen. Akira never left a message, never answered when he called back. He doesn’t know if she did the same for Ann, but after a couple more missed calls she stopped for good.

(And it’s not his fault, it _ isn’t, _ she could have _ stayed _ and then maybe it could have been _ her _ thighs wrapped around his ears, _ her _ moans bouncing off his bedroom walls, _ her _ tight and hot around his cock, _ her _snuggled up beside him talking about how much she missed— well, herself, so no, that wouldn’t have worked at all.) 

(And it couldn’t have been her, no; he couldn’t have done with her what he did with Ann, a hot quick month of distraction before Shiho finally got cleared to leave the hospital and Ann dropped him like a hot potato. It didn’t hurt, and still doesn’t. He knows where her priorities lie, he’s always known where he stands with her.)

(He doesn’t with Akira. Not anymore.)

“I,” he starts, then stops, because nothing he can say will help the situation, but goddamnit he has to _ try. _ “You never answered when I called back. Aki, I _ always _called back.” 

“Yeah, like twenty, thirty, forty minutes after you were done whatever you were doing.” There’s deep-seated bitterness laced through every word that comes out of her mouth, old, old hurts left to fester. “And it was never when you were working out, because you’d have told me if you were going to change up your workout routine, and it was never when the new Featherman was airing because we were all in the groupchat liveblogging at Futaba, and it was never during school, and never when you’d told me you’d be busy.”

“Thats kinda— Aki,” he says, trying his best to keep his voice even, because he _ really _doesn’t want to fight with her. Not now. Not when they’re both trapped in a car on the road together. “Just cause I didn’t pick up the phone didn’t mean I didn’t wanna talk to you—” 

“Yeah?” she asks, hot and quick in a way that signals something ugly is brewing. “You sure about that? Because how many— how many times have I called you? How many times did I call you in Tokyo that you never answered?” 

None. The answer is none, and he knows that in his bones. “None,” he says, “because you _ never _called me in Tokyo. It was always me reachin’ out, always me makin’ plans, tryin’ to squeeze into your schedule, so don’t start with that shit. We’re not talking about Tokyo—” 

“Of course we’re talking about Tokyo!” Her voice is getting louder, raising towards a tsunami crest that he doesn’t want to see crash down on them both. The damage will be catastrophic. “Why wouldn’t we talk about Tokyo?! It’s not like every single person I care about is still in that fucking city while I’m stuck in the boondocks! It’s not like I had to watch my best friends walk across stage without me! It’s not like I had to lose them before I barely had a fucking CHANCE to HAVE them—”

“You haven’t _ lost _anyone, Aki, we’re all still right here—” 

“You’re _ not! _ You’re not, nobody is, because every fucking time I tried to call you you were too busy _ fucking Ann _to pick up the phone!” 

“And why the hell’s it matter what she ‘n I were doin’ in our spare time?” he snaps. “It’s not like you didn’t do the same—” 

“Don’t fucking _ talk _about what we did or didn’t do—”

“Then you don’t bring it up either!” 

“Then what do you _ want _me to bring up, Ryuji?!”

“What the hell is wrong with you so we can fix it!!” 

“Fix me?” Her voice goes quiet, icy, fire turned to frost. “You want to fix me?” 

“Aki—” 

“No, no no no. You wanna fix me, Ryuji? Then invent a time travel machine and take me back a year and a half. Back to the middle of our second year. You remember that, right? Back when we were at the top of the world? Back when the Phantom Thieves were on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s thoughts? Back when Akechi _ fucking _ Goro betrayed us all, killed Haru’s father, lured us into a police ambush, and tried to _ murder me? _ !” Through her tirade, her voice rises, and Ryuji sets his shoulders and prepares for the inevitable. “Take me back to before I was beaten bloody by the _ fucking _ police! Take me back to before I spent a month and a half in solitary confinement! Take me back to before I had to come back to a town where everyone knows me and still believes the worst! Take me back before I had to watch my friends, my _ family, _ move on without me, forget I _ fucking existed! _”

She drags in a deep breath, a wet breath, a heaving, sobbing breath.

“Or take me back further to the start of that _ fucking _ year, and keep me from meeting you so I don’t have to go through _ losing _you!!” 

“You’re _ not losing me, _ you dumbass!” Ryuji shouts. “You never lost me! We were the ones that lost _ you!” _

There’s an awful, still beat, a dreadful moment of silence punctuated only by the sound of Akira desperately trying not to cry. “We lost _ you,” _he repeats, reaching out to grab her hand. 

She yanks it away. 

Ryuji’s stomach drops like a stone.

“We did,” he insists, “we fell apart without you. Haru ‘n Makoto were too busy to stay on our asses, and Yusuke was halfway across the city half the time, and Futaba’s just barely managing, even with Morgana; you really don’t think we would’ve all been better if you’d stayed with us? We—” 

“Stop,” she says, all the worse for how flat it is. “I really don’t want to hear about how much better it would’ve been if I was there in Tokyo with you this year. I know. Do you think I didn’t want to be?”

“Then why’d you go back—”

“My _ parents!” _ she howls, an outburst as surprising as it is loud, hysterical and overwhelmed. “My, fucking, do you _ really _ think I would’ve left _ any _ of you by choice? Do you really think I would’ve left my _ home?! _ My _ sister!? Morgana?!! _ There was no option! There was no choice! They wanted their trophy pet back now that I’d shaped up in the big city for a year! They wanted to play happy family again! They wanted to go jet set around the country pretending that everything was back to _ fucking _ normal again and leave me stuck in _ fucking _ Inaba! I can’t walk to Junes without someone giving me a side-eye! I can’t get a job because everyone knows about my ‘criminal record’ even though it was fucking _ cleared! _ None of my old friends will talk to me, none of my teachers want anything to do with me, it’s like I’m a fucking _ ghost _ everywhere I go and when I try to get in touch with the only fucking people that matter they! Never! _ Answer!!!” _

“Akira—”

“Every time I needed you you never _ answered,” _ she chokes out, like it hurts, like it tears something inside of her to make the words leave her mouth, “because you’d both, you’d already, it made me wonder if I was even still _ alive, _ if I even _ mattered, _ if I’d even _ mattered _to you, and—” 

Her mouth gapes, then shuts, jaw clenching hard enough to bite through steel, to fracture bone. Her shoulder hits the door almost at the same time as her hand hits the seatbelt release, as the other hits the door handle, and then she’s out of the car and staggering in the mulch and slippery dead leaves at the side of the road, staggering and then bolting, blindly sprinting. 

“Akira! _ Akira!” _Ryuji shouts, struggling to get out his own door, to run after her. At least this is a constant: he will always be faster than her, trained to maximize the acceleration between steps, flinging himself forward in defiance of gravity. He will always be able to catch up to her, even with a head start, but especially so because she’s wallowing across the turf like a drunk manatee, both hands over her eyes as she bawls, the wail of someone landing at rock bottom hard enough to shatter, not hard enough to die.

He skids to a slowdown next to her, grabbing her by the shirt. Her hands lash out; he brushes them off easily, reeling her in, crushing her to him, refusing to let her get away. “Akira,” he says, low, thick, wounded, “why didn’t you say—” 

“I _ di-hi-hiiiiid, _ ” she sobs, thrashing, trying to shove away. “I _ did, _ I _ did, _ I _ asked _ and _ asked—” _

“You didn’t!” 

_ “I did!!!” _She pulls hard enough that he almost overbalances, hard enough she almost frees herself, and he knows in his gut that if he lets her go now he’ll never catch her again no matter how fast he can run. He braces his feet and reels her in again, tighter this time, a hand all but wrapped around her head to tuck her into his shoulder, a hand tight around her waist crushing her arm to her side, leaving her only one.

It’s familiar. Hideously so. She got like this back in Tokyo once, after the interrogation, after being stuck in the attic for a week and a half sleeping off her injuries, chafing in her own skin, bouncing around like a mento in a shaken bottle of diet coke, the pressure building and building until it _ had _to explode. Ann had been with him, then, had curled up on Akira’s other side and all but laid on her, squishing her into the bed even as Ryuji’d wound around her head, kept her hands still, let her cry her frustrations into his shoulder.

That wasn’t as bad as this, with her half-wild and struggling, her hair in her face and tears and snot puddling in disgusting little splotches all across his shirt. She thrashes, squirms; he swears she tries to bite him at least once, but he holds on, because if he lets go he’ll never get her back.

And he feels the moment the fight goes out of her, the moment she sags like her strings have been cut, the moment her sobs go from animalistic fury to quieter, but no less hurt. He loosens his grip just enough to shift her, just enough to pour her into him so he can wind around her a little more closely.

There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing to be said in the face of this, and not a chance that she’d hear it in the first place. This isn’t a boil, this is a _ geyser, _one he wasn’t prepared for and one he made her open regardless. He asked her to take that jump, for him.

He wishes he hadn’t. 

She’s quieted down to heaving breaths and sniffling, most of the emotional minefield already exploded. He unspools, careful to keep at least one hand on her to keep her from bolting again. “Come back to the car,” he says as delicately as he can, hoping he doesn’t step on another hidden explosive and blow them both to shreds. “C’mon, Aki.”

She doesn’t respond, not verbally, but she follows when he tugs on her shoulder, moves with the hand on her back, slumps back into her seat like she’s run a marathon in the last ten minutes. Ryuji gets one of the water bottles from the trunk and hands it to her, but she lets it slip from her fingers into her lap, her face pressed against the window.

They sit in silence for a long while before Ryuji puts the keys back into the ignition. 

Even though she’s not moving, he can see her slipping away.

He doesn't know how to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sucks air in through teeth 
> 
> okay, sure


	4. (far, far away)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mental distance and physical

It’s been almost 24 hours since Akira’s spoken.

They stayed in a motel last night, the first one that Ryuji saw; the air in the car was too stifling, simmering with raw hurt and deep emotions dragged up to where they should never have been seen in the light of day. He knows her, knows her down to her bones— or thought he did. In some ways, the girl sitting barely 30cm to his left is a stranger as much as she’s his beloved best friend.

Has a year apart really changed her that much? Or is it himself that’s changed? Both? Neither?  _ Something  _ has to have shifted for him to miss a wound so big.

But then again, even with the world’s worst poker face she’s always been good about keeping the really secret stuff close to her heart. And several hundred kilometers of distance haven’t helped anything.

It would be unspeakably cruel to both of them to keep them cooped up back-to-back all night. He wouldn’t have slept. He’s sure Akira wouldn’t, either, and it’s even odds that she’d slip out of the car again and wander into the night.

He can’t lose her like that. He can’t let her lose herself like that, either.

So, a roadside motel, with a parking lot that backed onto a small, sandy beach, where the front desk clerk gave them a knowing eye and a room with only one bed, and Akira had locked herself in the bathroom until midnight, not coming out until Ryuji had shut the lights off and was curled at the extreme edge of the queen-sized mattress. He’d held his breath for what seemed like hours until he felt the other side of the mattress shift and dip.

He falls asleep to the sound of her voice, and wakes up with a pain in his neck to find her curled almost as tightly as he is, the middle of the bed a vast swath of no-man’s land.

She’s still sound asleep, and he can’t help but smile. Once never a morning person, always never a morning person.

There’s a rudimentary breakfast near the front desk, with fresh fruit and baked goods and Akira’s favorite thing in the world (coffee.) He fills a styrofoam cup, caps it, and grabs a couple pieces of fruit to take back and leave by her bedstand, a peace offering, a white flag. 

He only realizes once he’s done and drying off that he left his bag near the foot of the bed. The bag with all his clothing in it. Including his underwear.

He’s counting on her still being asleep when he steps out in nothing but a towel, scrubbing a second one through his hair. Unfortunately for him, she’s up and yawning, curtains opened, coffee in one hand and phone in the other, and mid-sip as he sheepishly heads for his bag.

She doesn’t move a millimeter. Not as he crouches, one hand keeping his waist-towel from parting and flashing his junk everywhere, and not as he stands again with clothes in tow and backs back towards the bathroom. Not at all, except for her eyes, tracking him back and forth across the room, and the blood in her cheeks rising slowly towards her ears.

Oh. Yeah. He  _ has  _ filled out since second year, hasn’t he? Enough that the sleeves of his favorite tee shirts cling around his arms almost uncomfortably, enough that his shoulders stretch the seams. Enough that it’s a bit of a struggle to get into them damp.

He comes back out fully dressed, clearing his throat. It’s probably not a good idea to get back into the car yet; even a night in an actual bed isn’t enough to smooth over the turbulence from yesterday. “I haven’t seen a real beach in ages,” he says instead, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Gonna go take a walk. Wanna come with me?”

He’s almost not expecting her to say yes. He can’t suppress the smile that stretches across his face from ear to ear when she nods hesitantly.

It’s a beautiful day out. The clouds are low and friendly, hanging in the air like a painting on a childhood bedroom wall. There’s a light breeze coming off the waves, smelling like salt and warm sand and sunshine. He spends his time looking between the sunlight glinting across the rippling water and Akira, her hands in her pockets, her shoulders metaphorically around her ears. 

He understands, or he thinks he does, or maybe he’s just pretending he does. It was a lot, yesterday, a lot to say and a lot to hear, a lot he’s sure she’d rather have gone unspoken. But it  _ was  _ spoken, and she can’t run away from it forever. 

No one can run away from their problems forever, even if they’re doing a great job trying.

The beach curves a little farther down the shore, into a cove studded with slippery rocks and tidal pools. “Cool,” he says without thinking, “I haven’t been poking around in one of these for ages. They got tidal pools near your place, Aki?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches her freeze, then start to thaw, glacially slow. She opens her mouth, then closes her mouth, and then shakes her head. “Guess it’ll be a first in a while for both of us. I wonder if there’s any fish?” 

On a whim, he slips out of his shoes and socks, leaving them in a messy heap near the mouth of the cove. The sand is cold and damp beneath his toes, almost uncomfortably so before he acclimates. “Augh, shit…” he mumbles, taking quick mincing steps towards the nearest of the rocks, half-covered in damp seaweed. “Cold, shit, cold, ack—” 

He loses focus on that as soon as he sees the first tidepool, though. It’s amazing, a tiny little oceanic microcosm. There’s tiny fish swimming around clumps of seaweed, and starfish clinging to rocks just below the surface. A pale anemone in the corner sways its lacy tendrils, and--

“Yo! Aki! Come here, quick, there’s an octopus!!” It’s right there, hanging out near some sea stars and what looks like an anemone. Impossible to miss, with bright yellow skin and bright blue rings, it’s a wonder he didn’t see it sooner. “Wonder if I can catch it…” 

He steps carefully into the tide pool, eases himself down onto open rock, reluctant to step on anything alive. Tiny fish dart away as he leans forward, leans down, slips both hands into the water to the elbow. Like it knows he’s coming, the octopus twirls a little. “Hey, little guy,” he says under his breath, “lookit you all flashy, c’mere—”

He hears Akira step up to the tide pool, looks up to see her cocking her head. “Right there, see?” He points underwater, moving slow so he doesn’t disturb his prey. She follows his finger towards the octopus, now shimmying away. “Aw, hell, hold still—” 

“ _ Don’t!!!”  _ Akira barks, loud enough to fill the cave with her voice until it rings off every wall, loud enough to make him jump and lose his footing. He yelps as he falls, hitting the water with an undignified splash for a second and a half before a hand fists into his collar and drags him upward again with surprising force.

She doesn’t stop when his head pops up, keeps pulling him until he backpedals, until he flails his way out of the pool, and even then not until there’s a good two or three meters between him and the water. “Akira, jeez,” he says, a little put-out, “it’s not like I was drowning—” 

“Blue-ringed octopi are venomous,” she says tightly. He looks up to see her eyes still locked on the tidepool, paler than she should be. “They kill within minutes, and there’s no anti-venom.” 

Oh. 

“Oh,” he says, a little weakly. “Uh...thanks.” He stands up, but her hand doesn’t slip out of his collar until he’s fully on his feet, soaked and sheepish. “Maybe we should head back?”

Akira bites her lip, her eyes hovering somewhere around his collarbone. “You gonna melt with a little salt-water dunk?” she says.

“No, I just— wait.” He squints, turns fully to face her, a grin stretching wide across his mouth. “Nah, Aki, that’s  _ you,  _ isn’t it? That’s fightin’ words coming from someone who wouldn’t even go into the ocean past her hips last time—” 

“Tokyo waters are disgusting!” she protests, squaring her shoulders as he takes a menacing step towards her, both his hands raised. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t you fuckin’ dare—” 

“These aren’t Tokyo waters, are they?” 

He lunges.

She turns tail and flees.

They run up and down the beach for what feels like ages, Ryuji laughing too hard to put his whole heart into it, Akira making tight, risky dodges, stumbling into the sand and shoving herself back up again, doing everything she can to avoid him. It’s the most fun he’s had in months, and he thinks it’s the same for her. She’s loose and wiggly, playful in a way she hasn’t been since long before she left Tokyo, and even when he finally scoops her up and barrels into the surf she doesn’t do anything more than dig her nails into his shoulders and screech into his ear before he flings her into the water.

She comes up soaked, looking like a drowned rat with her hair in her eyes and her shirt clinging to her shoulders, her chest, her stomach, and she’s  _ laughing,  _ helplessly, uncontrollably, doubling over so far that her face hits the water of the next wave.

Ryuji grabs her shoulders to keep her steady and lift her up, and catches just a glimpse of her face as he does so.

There’s a very thin line between laughing and crying. Something about how the human brain is wired puts them right next to each other; you can laugh while you cry and cry while you laugh. But the differences, while subtle, are there.

He can’t tell if it’s salt water or tears beading down her cheeks, but he reels her forward into his arms anyway.

And this time, she latches on and doesn’t let go.

Her arms wind tight around his torso, awkward until he stoops and hefts her up a few inches. She’s made buoyant by the salt water, but her full weight is still easily manageable as she winds her legs around his hips and inchworms up until she can get both arms around his head, her face buried into his hair. He rocks her slowly side to side, side to side; he might not know why she’s crying this time, but she’s letting him hold her through it so he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She cries herself out slowly, silently, only knowable by the hitches in her breath, and the deep, heaving sigh at the tail end. “Ready to go back now?” he asks. She nods into his hair. “Gonna let go?”

“Give me a piggyback,” she says, muffled, quiet. “I don’t want sand in my shoes.” 

He huffs, overblown and put-upon. “Brat. I should drop you.” 

“You won’t.” Her voice is quiet. Her words dig deep just the same.

She’s right. He wouldn’t willingly, knowingly drop her. Not ever.

They’re both tired enough by the time that they get back that going anywhere for lunch isn’t an option. They pool their spare change together and scrounge an assortment of snacks from the vending machine, dumping them on the bed once they get back to the room. It’s the same for dinner, after Ryuji takes his second shower of the day to sluice the salt from his skin and Akira her first to do the same.

With the makeshift meal over, a hint of tension winds its way back into the air between them. Akira is fidgety and awkward; Ryuji, tired out from his near-death spook and then hauling Akira’s ass all the way back to the hotel, gives in to his urge to slump down until he’s horizontal, stretching hard enough to crack every joint from his hips to his toes. “Ahhh,” he sighs, settling into his pillow and blinking lazily over at her. “I could use a nap.”

Without a word, she gets up and closes the curtains, blocking out the last of the evening’s light. A little confused, Ryuji sits up. “I—” 

“I could too,” she says, her back still to him. He blinks once, twice, then lays back down, rolling over to face the door as she crawls back onto the bed. Neither of them bother getting under the covers.

The tension gets thicker, somehow, until it’s taut and trembling between them, until the whole room feels filled with molasses. Something needs to break.

“Aki—” he blurts, only to be immediately over run by her “I’m sorry—” 

“Hey, huh?” He rolls over to face her back, where she’s curled back into a ball. “The hell do you think you gotta apologize for? Pullin’ me away from an octopus?”

“Freaking out yesterday.” She sighs. “More’n that. Lots of things. I’m sorry for a lot of things.” 

His first instinct is to shake his head and deny it, push all her worries away, but he tamps it down. “I forgive you, then.”

“So easily.” She chuckles without humor. 

“Of course. Just cause you were kind of a shit doesn’t mean you didn’t feel like you had a good reason to be.”

“I really didn’t.” She flexes, stretches out just a bit. 

“I think you did.” He’s been chewing on her words since yesterday like hard beef jerky until they’re malleable, until he can digest them. “I think you really did. Can we talk?”

“Aren’t we already?”

“For real, Aki.” He pats the bed; her shoulders go up around her ears again, but she slowly nods, dragging her pillow down against her chest and curling up around it. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he says again, more firmly. “So.” He chooses his words carefully, more carefully than he’s ever done before. “You…” He doesn’t know how to frame it, how to make it less like an accusation and more like a plea for understanding. “What did we do wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said— yesterday. You said that you asked for help, but Aki, I’ve been all through the group chats, our texts, our  _ everything,  _ and I asked Ann, and I asked Futaba, but neither of them could come up with anything either. So unless your service was cuttin’ out every time you needed something…” He trails off awkwardly, but his point is clear.

Akira draws in a huge gulp of air, holds it, then lets it out gustily. “Maybe I wasn’t,” she admits low and grumbly, “the most clear.”

“You think?”

“Shaddup.” He laughs. “I just…” She sighs again, and when she starts talking the words come out choppy, stilted. “I just thought. That maybe if… if I was talking about not being able to sleep so well, or how quiet it was in the house, or how hard it was to eat somedays, someone would...notice.”

And now that she says it, now that she’s laid it out for him, Ryuji can see it. It’s a uniquely Akira way of thinking, putting something out there without exposing too much of a weakness, partialing it out in bits and pieces until any one of them could be prodded at without disturbing the others. 

“But you didn’t,” she continues, “and that’s— that’s on me. I shouldn’t have— shouldn’t’ve gotten all bitchy when I hadn’t even said what I wanted. I just—” She sighs again, noticeably wetter. “ ‘s lonely in Inaba. I missed you.”

Ryuji aches to move across the bed, to draw her back into his arms and squeeze her until she squeaks. “I’m sorry too,” he says, “sorry we didn’t notice. You gotta tell us, okay? Tell us for  _ real,  _ cause none of us’re mind readers except Futaba. No dumb tricks, no wordplay, cause we’re all idiots—” 

He’s not expecting her to roll over. He’s super not expecting her to touch him again. But she does both; she flips over to face him, and her hand lands on his cheek.

They both freeze for the space of a couple breaths, before he barely sees Akira’s brows go down in the dim light and her hand curves a little more firmly across his face. “Stop talking about my friends like that,” she murmurs into the gloom. “It’s not your faults that I didn’t give you all the information. I thought I was speaking Japanese, when really it was more like...English, or Canadian.”

“Is that what Canadians speak?” he can’t help but ask, enjoying the way her face screws up all funny. “Y’know I’m bad enough at English, Aki, I can’t learn another language too.” 

But he has, he realizes. He’s learned  _ her,  _ at least in person, learned her language enough to read the way she sighs and stretches from fingertip to toes as shaking off the last of the stress from the last few days, even as a line of it remains in her shoulders, down her spine. “I could sleep now,” she admits, moving just enough to shimmy under the covers.

So Ryuji follows suit, and feels the no-man’s-land space between them grow shallower, until Akira’s back is pressed up against his own from shoulders to hips.

And later, once the night grows still and soft and quiet around them, she rolls over and molds herself to his back, her arm draped across his waist, her face buried between his shoulderblades, and Ryuji feels his heart give one, two, three heavy  _ thuds.  _

There’s no question about what he feels anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> polypus ex machina fuck yeah baybee


	5. (thank you, next)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> move on to bigger and better things

“Look, look,” Akira says intently, her face all but plastered against the glass. “Pull over, there’s a farmer’s market. I bet they’ve got something good to eat.”

“Man, how are you still hungry?” Ryuji groans, already slowing down. “Didn’t we just have breakfast like two hours ago?”

“It was three,” she tells him primly, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear. He follows the motion with his eyes even as the car judders to a bumpy halt in the gravel at the side of the road. “Ooo, fruit stands, that’s promising.”

“You still got cash?”

“Tons, yeah, ‘s fine, I think they have _ peaches—” _

“Wait for me to _ stop _ the _ car!! _” he yells, but she’s already unbuckled her seatbelt and flung herself out the door, to Ryuji’s unhappy squall and the car’s just-as-unhappy alarm.

This is the fourth stop today, a few days after Aki spooned him like a jetpack all night, a long relieved stretch of time after he thinks they fixed their friendship. Yesterday he pulled off closer to a dozen times, for anything from a cool tree she wanted to look at more closely or a cool rock formation she wanted to climb like a mountain goat. Food stands and nice picturesque ocean scenery and her _ smile. _

His phone has dozens of new pictures, maybe even hundreds; Akira mugging for the camera, Akira shoving food into her mouth, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk, Akira silhouetted between the ocean and the sky like she’s about to take off into either and leave the land for good.

And in almost all of them, she’s smiling.

He’s not stupid enough to think things are fixed between them, no. There’s a long series of hurts that are going to need to be gently brought into the sanitizing light of day, brushed clean and bandaged and laid to rest again to heal. Some of this is a facade, he’s sure, and she’s a good enough liar that he’s not always sure where the line between mask and mayhem is drawn, but he’s _ fairly _sure that the Akira bearing down on the roadside fruit stand with single-minded intensity isn’t faking it.

She’s finally treating this less like a slog and more like a _ vacation. _

They’ve spent the nights since back in the Yaris, curled back-to-back again on his laid-flat back seats. Sometimes he wakes up to her face buried between his shoulder blades again; sometimes he wakes to her scrunched against the farthest wall, huddled into a ball. Whichever works for her, he’s not going to press the issue, even if he does wish that she’d come back over and curl up with her arm around his waist again.

He lifts his phone absentmindedly as Akira comes striding one-two one-two towards him, mouth already full of peach, a bag of bright cherries in each hand, and captures the moment when she realizes and grimaces at him. “Do you _ have _to do that?”

“Yes.” He’s serious, too. She’s been smiling, but sometimes it’s forced, sometimes it’s like she’s pushing it out to keep whatever else she has going on in her head locked between her teeth. She swings from near-manic glee to long periods of exhausted silence on the road, head on her elbow on the windowsill and eyes a thousand kilometers away. He wants to document the real ones as they come. 

He takes another as Akira wrinkles her nose and tosses the peach pit at him. “Ew, Aki! I don’t want that all over me!”

“Shoulda thought about that before you started taking pictures of me.” She beans him in the face with a cherry and slides back into the car. “Hurry up! If y’get back on the road and hit the gas some, I bet we can get down towards the coast again ‘n find somewhere quiet to bed down for the night.” 

“Alright, alright.” She throws another one at him; this one he catches between his teeth, biting down hard enough that the juice splurts out from between the corner of his lips and Akira snerks. “Shut it, peach-mouth.” 

“Cherry boy.” 

“Scruffy pig.” 

“Bleached monkey.”

“Frizzy hair.” 

“Hamburger hindrance.”

“Jazz enthusiast.”

She gasps, loud and overblown, fingers curling over her mouth as her eyes crinkle back up again into that expression he loves, and he laughs as he peels out of the parking area, gravel pinging against the bottom of the Yaris.

The road goes on, an endless ribbon of gray asphalt and white paint, the scenery changing with every kilometer. Trees and scrubby brush, other cars and houses set far back from the road, and every so often a flash of the ocean beyond. They haven’t talked about where they’re going; at this point Ryuji doesn’t even know where they are in relation to Inaba or Tokyo or _ anything. _They’re just...where they are.

Dinner is sushi, freshly caught that morning, at a tiny roadside diner. Akira gorges herself, little hedonist, like she’s trying to make up for Morgana’s absence. They fetch up for the evening in a campsite parking lot, the trees hanging low and verdant above them.

Akira’s long since curled up in the back; Ryuji has the trunk door open, his feet swinging back and forth, toes scraping the ground. They’ve been chatting on and off, Akira’s head pillowed on a bundled-up sweatshirt near his thigh, still halfheartedly shoving cherries into her mouth one by one and spitting the pits out to fall, invisible, into the grass below. The conversation’s mostly died, both of them preoccupied by their phones. He doesn’t know what Akira’s doing, but she keeps making little muffled noises and tiny sighs. “Everything alright?” he ventures once.

She grunts, pinging him in the knee with a cherry pit.

So he scrolls back through his messages.

**>>new message from “dog with a bone” at 7:23pm** ****  
**>>to: nyann** **  
** _ yo _

**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ hi shut up i’m busy _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** **  
**ouch

**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ dont take it personally this is important _  
_ whats akira doing rn _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ uh _  
_ chilling _ _  
_why 

**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ no reason _  
_ hows she look _  
_ emotionally _  
  


He looks. She’s got her lower lip in her mouth, and a faint dusting of red on her cheeks, barely illuminated by the light of her phone screen.  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ pink _  
_ why _  
  
**>from: nyann** ****  
_ excellent >:3c _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ the hell’re you on about ann _  
  
**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ noooooooothing you need to worry about yet! _  
  


Akira coughs a little and shifts, stretching out into the empty space behind them. “Ann says hi.”

“Oh,” he says, surprised, “the two of you’re talkin’ again?” She makes a little _ mmm. _“Great.” And he meas it, even as something suspicious twinges in the back of his head. “Soooooo….what’s the convo about that’s gettin’ you all flustered?” 

“I’m not flustered,” Akira says immediately and defensively, clicking her phone back on. “She’s just being Ann. You know how that is.”

He does. Intimately. Her face falters a bit, goes a little wibbly, the moment cooling. He’s desperate to get it back. “She ever bite you so hard you tasted blood?” he blurts, and has the dubious honor of watching Akira’s eyes go wide and horrified.

“Th’hell were y’doin’ that she had to bite you that hard for?!” she asks, drawled-out and indignant.

“I wasn’t doing anything—”

“That’s your problem.” 

“-- that she didn’t ask me to do first!” he finishes, put-out and barely mollified by Akira’s little grin. She turns back to her phone for a moment. He goes to pick up his own again, but she speaks first.

“Not to the point of blood, no. She liked to use her nails more.” 

“Ah,” he says, and winces in memory. “Yeah.” On his knee, his phone starts vibrating. He ignores it. “Once I got back on the track team, I had guys razzin’ me for days about whatever I’d let tear up my shoulders. Got to the point where I had to make her stay on, uh—” shit, maybe that’s not the best thing to be talking about, his and Ann’s sex life, not when she was so upset over it earlier, but her gaze has drifted back over towards his knees and she’s not looking thunderously angry— 

“Yeah,” says Akira, her mouth a wry, wry tilt. “We tried 69’ing once and she got my thighs so good I couldn’t put my leggings back on.” 

Holy shit. He dimly remembers a week where all Akira wore were calf-high stockings and he spent his lunches doing everything he could not to look at her legs, but— damn.

“Damn,” his mouth says, before his brain can catch up. But Akira doesn’t take offense this time either, just laughs a bit under her breath and ducks her head, her hair falling across her cheek. 

His phone hasn’t stopped vibrating. He picks it up.

**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ ofmg the two of you are so stupid _  
_ so so so so stupid _  
_ ryuji istg if you don’t treat this girl right _  
_ i’m going to find where you are _  
_ and remove your balls _  
_ okay? okay _  
_ listen up _  
_ kiss her!!!!!!! _  
_ dont answer me if youre still talking but kiss her!!!! _  
_ youre both dumb idiots and i can’t wait for you to be stupid together _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ ann wtf???? _  
_ where is this coming from???? _  
  
**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ uhhhh _  
_ maybe the fact that i’m done listening to her pine over you? _  
_ and the fact that i’m done thinking about you pining over her too??? _  
_ youve literally been living out the stupidest friends-to-lovers trope in existence _  
_ you have the opportunity of a lifetime right now _  
_ and i’ll apologize to her later for trying to mess with her love life like this but _  
_ she deserves something nice and i want you to give it to her _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ what about apologizing for tryin’ to mess with MY love life??? _  
  
**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ *you* need all the help you can get _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ shes pining over me? _  
  
**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ STUPID _  
_ how can you be so oblivious _  
_ UGH get off the PHONE and find an excuse to KISS HER _  
  
**>>from: dog with a bone** ****  
_ the hell do you want me to do just lean over n go for it??? _  
  
**>>from: nyann** ****  
_ figure it out!!!!!! stop talking to me i can’t believe you _  
_ but let her come to you don’t force it on her or anything!!! _  
  


There’s no winning with her. He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair, and turns to see Akira’s eyes on his face, gaze dark and placid like a deep, still lake. “Tell me about the biting,” she says, the barest hint of uncertainty in her voice. “I wanna know what you did to rile her up that bad.” 

“Ah—” He has to think about it, scrubbing his hand through the short hairs at the nape of his neck sheepishly. “I think— yeah, I maybe stuck my tongue in her mouth while she was just about to blow?” 

Akira snorts hard enough that she convulses a bit, clearly trying to muffle her laughter. “Why the _ hell _would you do that?”

“I dunno!” His shoulders rise up near his ears just a tad. “Thought it’d be romantic or somethin’, you know? I figured it out pretty quick.”

“I’d say.” She shifts, the car bouncing a bit as she sits upright. “Ann told me you kissed like a dying manatee.” 

His mouth gapes. “She— I— the _ hell, _Ann! Did not!” And then it hits him like a brick, the opening he’s been given laid out in front of him in glowing gold letters with red carpet. “‘S not like you kissed any better, I’m sure,” he needles, watching her watch him.

Her lips part, just a bit. She inhales, holding her breath. He waits, bait set.

And waits.

And waits, and then she swallows, and licks her lips, and exhales in one long, loud gust. “That a challenge?” she says, sharp and nervous, all bark and no bite.

Ryuji shrugs, faux-casual. “You think it’s a challenge?” 

She scoots a few centimeters closer, till he can see the way her eyes are wide, the whites prominent in the twilight gloom. Her shoulders are tense but squared, breath coming in short huffs; almost exactly the way she faced down every challenge set before her during their madcap second year at Shujin. “I think you should put your money where your overconfident mouth is, manatee boy.”

Ah.

Forget minefields. This is going to be like frenching a live bomb.

He lifts his hand, watching for her to flinch, to move back, to show any signs of discomfort. She doesn’t, not even when his fingers tuck a bit of her hair behind her ear and slide down her cheek to her jaw. She doesn’t move back when he leans in, and doesn’t pull away even when he hesitates. “Chicken?” she murmurs, low and syrupy.

He kisses her.

It’s short, just a little there-and-gone brush of lips, but it sets his heart hammering. This is a line that can’t be uncrossed. This is new territory for them. This is going to change things, even if they pretend to the end that it’s casual.

He doesn’t want casual. Not from Akira.

She’s the one to make the next move, to press forward and into his mouth again, to tilt her head and sigh a tiny breath across his mouth. She’s the one who parts her lips just a touch, but he’s the one to deepen it, to cup her jaw a little more firmly and dart his tongue out, just a bit.

It’s all sorts of cliche, but she tastes like the ghosts of all the cherries she’s devoured in the last half hour or so. Her jaw goes slack, warm and willing and inviting; without him noticing, she’s shifted almost completely into him, thigh pressed hard into his, arm looping over his neck. His hand moves from her jaw to brush across her cheekbone, to curl into the hair at the back of her head instead, relishing the tiny gasp it gets, taking the opportunity to taste every forbidden inch of her mouth.

She’s so warm. Her hair is so soft, and her breath puffs against his face in tiny bursts. She’s a fantastic kisser, so different from Ann; slow and deliberate, giving no quarter and taking no shit. He leans back and she chases his mouth, so he gathers her up and into his lap to get her closer, her arms going around his neck, teeth digging lightly into his lip as an admonishment that does nothing but set his blood boiling.

The way she sighs into his mouth is better than any trophy or medal he’s ever won.

He doesn’t know how long it is until they surface for air, foreheads pressed together. He opens his eyes; Akira’s are still shut tight, mouth screwed up in a funny little line that makes him bold. “So?” he asks. “What’d you think?” 

Her jaw works for a moment, lips parting, then squeezing back together. “Not a manatee,” she says shortly, sharply, not opening her eyes.

He can’t help the triumphant grin that spreads across his face. “Soooooooo...does that mean I can kiss you again?”

_ Now _her eyes flutter open, as dark and unreadable as ever. He takes the risk of nudging his nose into hers a little more, bold as anything, twirling a lock of hair around one of his fingers.

She swallows. 

She opens her mouth. 

She says, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” 

Ryuji blinks. “Why, cause you don’t wanna kiss me or because it’s your brain bein’ a shit?” At her startled look, he runs a hand down her back, noting the way she shivers. “I may not know what’s going on inside here—” he taps her forehead with a knuckle twice, and relishes the glare he gets, “— but I know you, ‘n I know you don’t ever do things you don’t wanna do. And if you don’t, that’s fine, but if it’s just you tryin’ to convince yourself that you don’t, I’d rather go around the emotional whinging and get back to the good part, for real.” 

He waggles his eyebrows at her to punctuate it, before he admits “And I’ve been waitin’ a long time to do somethin’ like this.”

He can feel the full-body shudder that works its way upwards from her toes to her scalp. “Yeah?” she breathes. “How long?”

Ryuji laughs a little, just once. “Prolly since I watched you bring that chandelier down on Kamoshida’s fat head.” 

He can barely see in the dark by now, but Akira’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “And you didn’t say anything.” 

“Nah. But I’m sayin’ it now.”

“You haven’t said anything.”

“Sure I did! No more emotional whinging, yeah? I like you. I’ve liked you for a long time. And I’d like to keep kissing you, if that’s what you’d like, too.” 

Akira makes a little noise, throaty and, he thinks, happy. “In that case,” she says, her voice a few notes lower than before, “then yes. I would like. Thank you.” 

His phone’s been vibrating for the past few minutes again. Before he pulls Akira close again, he glances at the notification on screen.  
  
**>>48 new messages from: nyann** ****  
**>>latest message:** ****  
_ also _ _  
_ _ pull her hair!!! she loves that _

Maybe he’ll try it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my life is falling apart but at least I'm on vacation now


End file.
